Secret Criteria

A major difficulty faced by student applicants and university bursary administrators is that the criteria used by the Department of Education for assessing hardship applicants is secret to the Department. The Waikato study actually worked out what the criteria were in 1980, but there is no guarantee that it will be the same in 1981. The Waikato study produced an amazing revelation about one of the consequences of using secret criteria for a means-testing system. It observed that: "...less than half of the 'anomalous' decisions were challenged mainly because the students concerned had insufficient knowledge of the basis on which the original assessments were made." (emphasis added).